US prods NKorea to give nuclear declaration this month
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States prodded North Korea Wednesday to provide a full declaration of its nuclear weapons program this month to push ahead with an aid-for-disarmament deal.
"I think we are at a point where we really do need to make progress soon to wrap up this second phase. I certainly would like to see it done in -- even in this month, in March," chief US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill told reporters.
He said submission of the declaration, which was originally due end-2007, was critical for North Korea to move into the denuclearization deal's next and "ambitious" phase -- dismantlement of the reclusive state's nuclear program.
Last week, Hill held talks with his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye-Gwan in Geneva but was unable to get a "complete and correct" declaration.
The United States says the North has still not answered questions about an alleged covert enriched uranium weapons program and about possible nuclear cooperation with Syria. Pyongyang, which tested a nuclear bomb more than a year ago, denies both allegations.
"And now, I think, the DPRK's (North Korea's) negotiating team is back in Pyongyang and we'll give them a few days and see what the next step is," Hill said Wednesday.
"So we are trying to get this done as fast as we can. We've devoted a lot of attention to it in recent weeks as we've been in this sort of overtime period since the end of December, but we're not there yet," he explained.
Hill, who is US assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, rejected suggestions that there were problems with the format of the declaration to be made by North Korea.
"I can definitively tell you that format is not the problem," he said. "The basic problem, though, is that the DPRK is not yet prepared to provide the complete and correct declaration."
North Korea last year signed a landmark deal to abandon all its nuclear weapons in exchange for one million tonnes of badly needed fuel oil or its equivalent as well as major security and diplomatic benefits.
But the six-party process -- involving the United States, China, both Koreas, Russia and Japan -- has been stalled since North Korea missed the deadline to declare all its nuclear programs and disable a plutonium plant.
Despite it failure to declare and disable its nuclear program, Hill said the United States made a second shipment of 54,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil that arrived in North Korea in the last week or so.
"I think there are so-called heavy fuel oil equivalents that the ROK and PRC -- South Korea and China -- are working on. I think those are also arriving, so I think the record from our side is probably better," he said.
The United States, China, South Korea and Russia had earlier each dispatched 50,000 tonnes of oil to North Korea since it froze its key Yongbyon nuclear facilities and began disabling them last year.
